These days, there is an abundance of information available on the World Wide Web (hereinafter “Web”). However, if a user does not know about a website or that certain information may be available on the Web, the user may not be able to access that website or be presented with information that they may be interested in. The terms website and webpage are used interchangeably throughout this document.
Additionally, since the advent of the Web, web browsers (hereinafter “browser”) such as NETSCAPE or INTERNET EXPLORER have presented users with a default page that loads when the browser is first launched. Most browsers, however, allow users to change their default homepage. If users change their homepage at all, they typically set their homepage either to a search engine, such as google.com, or to a content portal, such as yahoo.com or msn.com. Search engine homepages, however, often have static content, i.e. the user is presented with the same homepage each time the browser is launched, while content portals provide overly generalized content that is selected by the content provider. Accordingly, being presented with the same homepage each time that the user launches their browser does not expose the user to a variety of websites that they may otherwise be interested in viewing.
In recent years, services have emerged that allow users to personalize their homepage. These services, such as MY YAHOO and NETVIBES, aggregate content from a wide variety of sources and present this content in a modular fashion within a personalized homepage. While these personalized homepages present dynamic content, they do not present dynamic user experiences, as the content may change but the format and website remain the same. For example, while users can view the latest news feeds, blogs, weather, and other items, but does not experience new websites or content as its publisher intended.
Furthermore, even the earliest browsers had the ability to store a user's favorite links, called favorites or bookmarks. A major expansion on this has been the advent of bookmarking websites such as DEL.ICIO.US and FURL. These services began as ways for users to store their bookmarks with an online service so that those bookmarks could be accessed from any computer. This model quickly involved into what has become known as social bookmarking, which allows users to easily share bookmarks with one another. Typically a user can browse another user's bookmarks either by invitation or by public access, and if the user likes the description of a link, the user can select that link to view a webpage associated with the link. Similarly, users can access their own bookmarks stored on the online service. However, there are many situations where it would be desirable to have a simplified and streamlined process for accessing either one's own bookmarks or the shared bookmarks of others. For example, if a user would like to access a random link within her company's collection of “competitor companies” bookmarks, there currently isn't an easy way to do so. Alternatively, a user might want to simply select an icon or button to access the next sequential web page within a set of bookmarks.
As such, it would be highly desirable to address the above drawbacks while providing a more dynamic and personalized experience for Internet users.